“Very tense”: How the Marx brothers inspired Pink Floyd’s wild live shows
No matter the tainted perceptions of Pink Floyd leaders David Gilmour and Roger Waters, it’s hard to deny their exceptional ability to excel both within the studio and during live performances. The latter was a particularly impressive affair, especially considering how they would often immerse their audiences in meticulously placed visuals or pyrotechnics, taking their music and stage presence to a new level.
Beyond the aesthetic quality, they also pushed the boundaries of sound, enhancing the experience with the type of audible quality that provided the ultimate immersion. Each show would differ from the last as the band placed the utmost importance on ensuring every audience member left with a story to tell. As Gilmour later reflected, “Yes, we did all sorts of strange things, you know, for live concerts as well, we used to make up tapes for the audience to come in by.”
These tapes would often be 30 minutes long and include “bird noises in quadrophonic sound”, Gilmour said, detailing how such choices would give arriving audiences a unique experience and place them in a specific kind of mood before the show. They would also include “pheasants taking off in the distance, and swans taking off from water, a tractor driving down one side of the room, and an aeroplane going over the top,” Gilmour said, “You just stick them in and you create a type of mood.”
This is why it isn’t so difficult to pinpoint many of their most iconic musical moments, each providing the type of magnitude you could only fully understand or appreciate if you were actually there. Many of these choices also flirted with audience expectations, sometimes making them feel they were under some kind of unavoidable darkness, but which gave them something to have a good laugh about afterwards.
However, as with any gimmick, there’s a lot of planning involved, which places an immense value on understanding the dynamics of everybody involved. “With the amount of technology up on stage these days, you’ve got to have your wits about you,” Gilmour told Q in 1990. “The stage is covered in little mirrors and lights and monitors and trapdoors that open with things coming out at you. With pitch darkness between songs you’ve got to know exactly where you are.”
One choice included a floating stage during one of their shows in Italy, which the musician also admitted was a decision they borrowed from a movie featuring the Marx brothers. “I’d seen it in a Marx Brothers movie, but I don’t think it had ever been done before on that scale,” he said. “We had to hunt the world for a barge big enough – I set problems and other people are sent off to find solutions! The Venice show was great fun, but it was very tense and nerve-wracking.”
That said, the entire endeavour was immensely ambitious and filled with its share of challenges, mainly due to broadcasting, alongside safety and security issues. Steve O’Rourke even expressed concerns about playing Venice, but Gilmour insisted on seeing it through. Throughout the entire experience, they faced several hurdles, like gondoliers demanding large sums of money; otherwise, they would disrupt the entire show from start to finish.
Nonetheless, the show went on, and despite the subtle mishaps, they remained the masters of the live show. “We had a really good time,” Gilmour said, proving that nothing—not even groups of locals and authorities—would get in the way of one of their life-changing performances.
